The best time to accomplish a reform of the legislature would be before the term of office of the incumbent lawmakers ends next month, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said on Sunday.
Once new lawmakers are elected and assume office on Feb. 1, they would not want to push for reform because “one with power in their hands does not want to see their power checked and balanced,” the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Wang said.
The presidential and legislative elections are scheduled for Jan. 16.
Photo: CNA
The Legislative Yuan is made up of 113 lawmakers, whose four-year terms started on Feb. 1, 2012, and expire on Jan. 31.
Wang has shown an eagerness to push for long-discussed reforms of the legislature, particularly giving the legislature the power to investigate major political controversies, demand that relevant authorities present data in relation to the investigation and hold parliamentary hearings so that anyone can be called to testify and present evidence.
The power to hold legislative hearings, which he describes as a “solemn parliamentary power,” is the most important piece of the legislative reform process, Wang said.
As both the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have included a proposal to hand the legislature the power to undertake investigations and hold hearings in their draft legislative reform bills, it is likely that the proposal could be passed if the two sides reach a consensus, Wang said.
Commenting on Wang’s proposal, DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said it would be better to leave the issue to the lawmakers who are to be elected in the Jan. 16 elections.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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